Why waiting till the last minute kills your favorite Long Island Belly Dance events!

Stepping off into the shallow end of the big bad world of event producing has brought this topic even more home for me and I am sure many others. I have wanted to write this post for awhile and here it finally is in miniature form! We as a community are responsible for our own unhappiness:  Why did this event get canceled? I really wanted to go, why are they charging so much?, why don’t they bring in something different?, ugh why is it in such a dinky place?...etc. 

We as a community tend to be last minute people. Life tends to be highly unpredictable especially once you add large amounts of money into it. Plus if you live in a high belly dance volume area there are a ton of events going on at the same time. It becomes hard to figure out where to go and when…so we sit and wait for the best opportunity. Or we don’t want to lose out on money if we suddenly cannot attend. Which I totally get. I have been guilty of the great wait for events...or meaning to go then not.

When we do this however we are letting down our event organizers. If you have never hosted an event it is NOT as easy, cheap or profitable as it can look. There is a lot of time, planning and expense that goes into an event. Many events do not break even or just barely squeak by.  Organizers need to make sure they are going to be able to pay the venue and the talent as well as upfront costs that may occur.  Some talent contracts may have a cancelation deadline. If the event doesn’t have a lot of registration by that date many organizers will pull or cancel that event before the deadline.  Some don’t and then it becomes a coin toss on if it will workout or not.                        

We also tend to have a “oh we will catch it next time they/it comes around”. If ithere isn’t enough registration, especially in advance  there is no guarantee that there will be a next time.  I am saying to keep this thought in the back of your mind the next time an event comes around that you see and you say to yourself:  “Hey, I really want to go to that.”  And this applies all over, not just to long island belly dance! So get out there and go enjoy some great dance events!

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